


rotate;

by Dualscar



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Coping, Gen, Introspection, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dualscar/pseuds/Dualscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yata feels cold. He has felt cold for a very long time now, and he hates to think that it's because it hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> Yata lost someone who gave him a new world where he finally belonged, and that is rather tragic, you know.  
> Disclaimer: K and all its characters belong to GoRA. I merely weave tales.

In the sky, you can count at least eight different types of red and orange and ochre; if you look harder, more. But there's more victory in savoring how all those colors meld together in a glorious conflagration. Amidst it is the reddest spot of them all – the sun. Cloaked in the hues of a joyful furnace, she makes her grand exit for all to see.

Sunset has never been sweeter, and yet, to Yata Misaki, she tastes like death.

He gives it a moment’s consideration and then flops down into the dry grass along with his skateboard. The waters he faces remind him – rather cruelly – of a scene in the movie he had watched last week. The blood of the brave martyrs tinted the crystalline river scarlet, and its ebb and flow itself was like a song lamenting and lauding their sacrifices. There were no more words to be said.

He has been looking forward to summer, but it holds none of the comfort he thought it would promise. He tried. He wore uncharacteristically thick outfits, he stopped himself from turning on the air conditioning, and he went skateboarding every day to feel the blood rise to his skin and the sweat make his hair cling to his forehead. He knows it was childish, but that did not stop him from desiring the odd, bittersweet satisfaction it ought to have provided.

His fingers automatically run over the underside of the skateboard. It is warmer than he can ever hope to be. In this season, heat infuses every conductor, and it knocks upon the doors of the insulators, but for they who have been left leaderless, the chill of a winter which has long melted away pervades their very being.

Or perhaps it is just him. He thinks he can hear voices in the distance, and they just might be calling his name. He turns around. He is blissfully alone.

Ever since the 19th of December, he has been privy to these disembodied voices, and even to him who they all call a well-intentioned idiot, the insight that he might be yearning for a voice to tell him of somewhere he can run so he can feel _whole_ again struck.

(He never remembers dates. It’s a miracle he hasn’t forgotten that one. How could he?)

It would be a poor substitute for the life that was whipped away from him, though, and he detests substitutes and lies and band-aids and that whole spiel that accompanies delusion. He is also being hypocritical, but he supposes his own issues aren’t something he consciously asked for.

Or maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be right to continue on without them. It is his little homage to the one man who managed to rekindle the fire in his gut. Yata’s way of telling him that he hasn’t moved on without some baggage, troublesome as it may be. But he has always endured anything and everything for him. It is all he can do to keep that tradition going.

He tries not to look at the skies. They seem to be beckoning him; he is stronger than that. The stress shows as tears on his cheeks. He wipes them off in one fluid motion; he has gotten used to this, after all. It feels nigh on shameful to be doing something _he_ would never be found doing.

Around him, the world is turning.

He wants to run up to every man and woman and child on these streets and scream into their ears, _how could you forget him and move on_ , _why hasn’t time come to a standstill_ , _why hasn’t the world ended for you,_ _why why why_ , _help me help me please come back why won’t he come back_. There is blood on his tongue, and why shouldn’t he do that, why shouldn’t he indulge himself, why shouldn’t they be frightened that he would sound half-deranged, _why?_

Why did all of that matter when it was all already over?

What would happen if he leapt atop the bar and slammed Kusanagi-san’s shoulder into all his expensive wines and yelled; and yelled _why aren’t you crying, he was your friend goddammit, why are you still running this bar, why are you keeping us all together, why can’t you act like something’s wrong_?

If he wrenched Saruhiko from that orderly, overly perfect workplace of his and pushed him down in that very same alleyway where he had announced his decision to leave for good, _are you happy Mikoto-san’s gone, are you happy the man who saved you couldn’t be saved himself, you don’t care do you, you fucking traitor, you don’t care, you’re supposed to fucking care, why don’t you care?_

He would do it if he doesn’t know he couldn’t.

When he stands, he nearly trips over his own foot. The world around him is spinning too fast for anything to remotely register in his memory, so he allows himself to sink into the void where all sensation is absent while his feet lead him to the railing separating him and the calm, unmindful lake. Having absorbed much of the day’s heat, it is unpleasantly warm, but he grasps it tightly anyway because he hopes some of that can seep into his bones.

He realizes that he is terribly afraid.

Fear is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and he knows very little about it. When he loitered around the streets of Shizume-chou with Saruhiko he knew no fear because what fear would assail a man with no purpose? When he faced the choice of having to scar his body permanently or obtain unimaginable power he knew no fear because what fear would assail a man who had finally found someone to protect him? When he led HOMRA into battle he knew no fear because what fear would assail the vanguard of the Red King himself?

What fear wouldn’t assail someone who had lost everything which gave him a reason to live and love and laugh? He swings himself atop the railing. It is still warm as he seats himself upon it and teeters above the blood of the martyrs.

The martyrs speak to him, and he tells them to shut up because this is no time for their intervention. A part of him feels like it wants to join them, though. He’s 20, and he wants to go out in splendor and have his blood tint the skies madder red and the waters redder. If he leaves, however, to whom will he entrust the job of keeping the spirit in HOMRA alive? He cannot. It has to be him. He has to keep the fires alight so no one forgets what they live for and what they always should live for.

He can’t even say “Mikoto-san” without sputtering. It’s a very unwelcome change.

The world spins and he feels rather dizzy. He plants his feet on terra firma and returns to retrieve his skateboard. He is awoken at midnight when he receives a message from Kusanagi-san asking if he plans to return from his patrol at all. He tries to respond and fails, but there’s no cause for worry because he is still Yata Misaki and he can still do a splendid job of whacking someone over the head. He replies next morning.

* * *

 

Today is the 10th of August and it is an important day. It is the anniversary of Kusanagi-san’s bar, or so he says, and indeed he seems to have outdone himself in his polishing and arranging and the other things he seems to have been busying himself more since that day everything shattered. Yata doesn’t comment, and neither are any comments expected from him. Really, they hardly expect anything out of him anymore and it makes him feel like a shell, but he’d never say it or it would bend his pride backwards.

It is also important for Kamamoto because he has a fried rice judging competition that is apparently so important two people had to plead him to attend as the judge even though he claimed his tastebuds hardly worked in summer. He returns in the afternoon looking absolutely exhausted, and seats himself on the couch, shutting his eyes conveniently. Yata wants to smack him over the head due to some inexplicable urge that Kamamoto usually triggers in him.

In three days, Mikoto-san would have been twenty-five years old, so today is also important because everyone at HOMRA usually began preparing for parties three days in advance. Yata remembers that. But it doesn’t seem to bear any semblance of importance to anyone else anymore, so he settles instead for calling his skater friend up again and saying he will be able to make it to the skate park after all. He is still Yata Misaki, and he is the envy of everyone over there because his skateboarding prowess is unmatched.

* * *

 

It is fall, and he hasn’t wept for a very long while now. He isn’t sure whether to be proud, or terrified that his attachment to him wasn’t having a staggering emotional impact on him anymore. He feels rather small when he realizes it is the latter, because come evening he actually catches himself relieved when Chitose’s curry brings tears to his eyes. It is with slightly greater vigor that he tells the mouse-haired man off, and that isn’t something many of them fail to observe.

The downside to this is that he takes an abnormally long while to fall asleep that night, because it comes to him that there really was a reason to yell at Chitose; his stomach feels like it was scalded. He is still Yata Misaki, and he grasps at stray reeds and guilt hits him too late.

(Lately he has been wondering if forgetting is an alright thing to do, and usually decides it isn’t. He has all the time in the world to think. Kusanagi-san keeps reminding him that HOMRA has no future.)

* * *

 

He buys lilies on the 7th of December and they look beautiful on Totsuka-san’s grave. The next morning, he can hardly get out of bed because he is too busy desperately pleading all this is a terrible nightmare. It isn’t, and he sees the calendar on the wall, and groans because there are only eleven days left.

It doesn’t even occur to him to take his skateboard along. He would never admit it, but there have been cracks and faults in his skill lately, and that is but one more worry that chips away at his sense of self bit by crooked bit. Besides, the _clack_ and the _bang_ and the _whoosh_ as he rattled along with his feet on the board were not followed by any validation anymore; as though he balances precariously atop an air bubble which he has to burst of his own will every time the wheels hit ground again. A broken marionette.

He skips his shift at the restaurant and purchases roses, the reddest of them all, but he can’t hold them. He offers them to Anna, and she accepts them with a small smile that lifts his spirits. Today, she is dressed exquisitely, and she cuts quite the scene with the bouquet she clutches as she daintily walks down the street holding Kamamoto’s hand. Indeed, she looks like a princess from another time, another world.

Whatever world it was, she was closer to him than Yata had ever managed to be, and he is mildly envious. Earlier he would have reprimanded himself for entertaining that thought, but he has grown to allow himself these little bouts of selfishness. They are harmless, after all.

They arrive at the crater. Anna sings, and it is slow and beautiful and lamenting and broken and childish and certainly not enough to make him cry. The roses fall from her fingers. He does, and he doesn’t give one damn about his broken streak, and neither does anyone. All of them are veiled by an invisible flame, and it welds their destinies together today. He can see it if he squints.

He stays the longest, and brushes off anyone’s and everyone’s gentle reminders that it was time to leave. He would leave when he felt it was appropriate to, and that was all. For several agonizing units of time (he isn’t really sure if they are seconds or minutes or hours and who really cares anyway) he allows himself to wallow in the stench of loss and death that hangs heavy above this depression in the ground.

It has been one year, and he would be 21 in seven months’ time, and he has never felt _less_ like Yata Misaki, because he is certain Yata Misaki was born to serve Suoh Mikoto.

He leaves the offering of roses to wilt, because if one year’s worth of lamentation couldn’t bring him back, roses definitely wouldn’t. The world spins.


End file.
